Mount Hood's wilderness sawyers are a cut above

2014 marks the 50th anniversary of The Wilderness Act

Though trail crews hike into the Mount Hood National Forest every spring to maintain trails before droves of hikers arrive by summer, this year they have a special reason to focus on wilderness.

Fifty years ago President Lyndon B. Johnson signed The Wilderness Act of 1964 into law.

The document, written by Howard Zahniser, created a formal mechanism to designate and protect more than 9.1 million acres of federal land.

Congress passed into law what the government now considers the definition of wilderness:

A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain, the act succinctly states.

When Congress designates each wilderness area, it includes a very specific boundary linein statutory law. Once a wilderness area has been added to the system, its protection and boundary can only be altered by another act of Congress.

Today, wilderness encompasses 109.5 million acres of national forest in 757 areas of 44 states and Puerto Rico.

In Oregon, Mount Hood has one of the largest expanses of wilderness. In 2009, President Obama signed legislation to add 2 million more acres of wilderness in nine states, including 128,000 acres near Mount Hood.

Obama called the new law among the most important in decades to protect, preserve and pass down our nations most treasured landscapes to future generations.

A Gresham Outlook reporter tagged along with a group of volunteers from the Pacific Crest Trail Association, who in some ways are the peacekeepers between savage Mother Nature and the humans who revel in her beauty.

Keeping the wilderness wild

To keep the peace and solitude, groups hiking in wilderness are limited to 12 beating hearts.

That means, for example, 12 people, or six people and six horses, or four people, four horses and four dogs, said Roberta Cobb, who has been clearing trails for the Mt. Hood Chapter of Pacific Crest Trail Association since the mid-1990s, You get the idea.

People are free to hike in wilderness, but certain activities that may disturb the forest are prohibited: no motors or mechanized equipment, and no bikes or hang gliders. Logging, oil and gas drilling are obviously a no. Scientific research and general trail maintenance are allowed. Mainly, ecosystems within wilderness must be free to change over time in their own way, free of human manipulation.

The idea is that these places are set aside to be kept in a natural condition, Cobb said. Before The Wilderness Act, there wasnt really deep protection for these areas.

Now wilderness is the highest protection.

Some may not know trails are maintained differently in wilderness than non-wilderness areas, Cobb said.

For instance, trails workers who cut logs  sawyers  are restricted to more primitive tools.

Everything is hand-powered, she said. The Minnesota native first learned to operate a chain saw on her familys 80-acre farm. A former Intel employee, Cobb now runs her own programming business from home.

Instead of power tools and chain saws, sawyers hike miles through the forest with long cross-cut saws on their backs to buck trees. The five-person crew I am with is made up entirely of volunteers, trained in first-aid and possessing cross-cut saw certifications.

Packed for a days hike on Thursday, May 1, (the warmest day of the year so far), we are asked to carry two liters of water and a host of other tools: axes, loppers, rakes, hatchets, shovels, clippers and the cross-cut saws.

The rule is you carry one tool in your hand, some in your pack and have your second hand free.

I am carrying the hand-saw, which is also doubling as a hard place to write on my note pad while hiking.

The work is dangerous no doubt, said Cobb, a veteran crew member who has hiked 1,500 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. On a past work party, one man merely fell on a saw and was left in serious condition.

But she assures me everyone knows what theyre are doing.

She also baked delicious carrot muffins for the crew, all men except for us.

Ramona, Ramona

Today, as noted by our crew leader Robert Caldwell, known also by his trail name Pace, we will be clearing nine or so logs in and around Ramona Falls. Almost every section of trail needs a log-out, Caldwell said.

Ramona Falls Trail No. 797 is well-known to most local hikers. The crew tells me it is actually overpopulated for wilderness, and not much in the way of solitude. But an attempt to enforce permits for hikers didnt work, so everyone just accepts it, they say.

Thats the reason we want to get in and log it, Caldwell said. Otherwise people come in and do what we call resource damage  they trample the brush and plants around the trails.

Because its normal for the glacial-fed Sandy River to swell in size and thrash about, the bridge the U.S. Forest Service puts in every spring for hikers to cross the river has been washed out.

Its hard to determine where mother nature wants to put the water, said Caldwell, a former engineer and accountant, who in recent years has led wilderness expeditions for Outward Bound, an outdoor leadership program for kids and adults.

We will be crossing the river on a giant fallen log.

Lucky for the crew, Caldwell hiked the route a couple of weeks ago to make sure its safe and he prepped the logs, removing their limbs.

Most of the snow on the trail has melted, but he warns us to watch out for Devils Club, a spiky-leafed plant that sticks out of the ground like a giant claw.

From the trailhead, we follow the Sandy River eastward to the log. Shrunk to its normal size, the river has left in its path a hollowed out wasteland of sand, scattered boulders and heaps of bone dry timber. Here are the remains of a volcanic debris flow from more than 200 years ago. In the distance, Mount Hood glows white, but its dark blue crags are beginning to show.

Caldwell points to an old washed out trail. A carpet of grass and trees is about to drop off its ledge.

Our detour leads us through a moss-padded forest. We are careful not to step on blooms of trilliums lurking in the shadows.

After we cross the river and meet up with the Pacific Crest Trail, I ask how Ramona Falls got its name.

From the way back, one of the crews leaders, Bill Hawley, starts telling the story loudly so we can all hear, Way back in 1888 or 89, a couple homesteaded up here and Ramona caught smallpox and perished.

As I struggle to scribble his words down, the crews starts laughing. The story is in fact no where close to true.

Hawley, a former carpenter, chuckles and says, This is what you do when you are walking in the woods and carrying tools.

Dont run with saws

Each fallen log we come to  they get bigger as we hike deeper in the forest  is like a puzzle.

The crew sets down their gear ahead of the log and walks back to analyze the situation.

Trying to figure out how to move it is the hardest part, said crew volunteer Tyler Marriott, a Vietnam veteran and former firefighter.

Before taking out any tools, the team discusses the hazards: where the log is bound, where they are going to cut it, and how the log will come down.

Cobb says the goal is to make as few cuts as possible, and make cuts as clean and controlled as possible. If they judge the pressure in the log wrong, the saw blade may get pinched in the wood.

These days the largest logs sawyers face are up to four-feet wide.

One hundred years ago, they cut timber 15 feet wide, said Hawley, who is also a cross-cut saw instructor, but those days have gone by.

He said crews only uses cross-cut saws if they have to because their saws are at least 80 years old and the blades are so difficult to sharpen.

All of the good cross-cut saws are antiques, he said. With the advent of chain saws, artisans quit making the cross-cut blades. He says the quality of a saw lies in the steel and design and thickness, Theres a taper to it, he said, pointing to slight bend in the long jagged-edge blade.

They just dont make them like that anymore.

The PCTA owns many of the saws the trail maintenance crew uses, but are always looking for more.

While the saws themselves are long lasting, the teeth can break out or become dull, Hawley said.

If the pitting between the blades goes bad, the saw becomes useless, he said.

In the old days, dull saws were called misery whips.

The tools artisans use to sharpen these saws also are antiques.

Very few people know how to sharpen these, Hawley said.

But when sawyers get a good-and-sharp cross-saw going on a log, they say, it sings.